Man of Steel’ offers a moody origin

Friday

Jun 14, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Family Filmgoer

3 — Teens will surely respond to this arrestingly reimagined origin story of the 75-year-old DC Comics’ hero, Superman. Director Zack Snyder and co-writers David S. Goyer and Christopher Nolan weave in religious imagery and phrases, which lend the film a kind of weight that may be overdone, but has the power to move and impress teens in search of depth in their movies.

Snyder tells the story in flashbacks and flash-forwards, forcing an audience to pay close attention. It opens on Superman’s home planet of Krypton. Lara (Ayelet Zurer) gives painful birth to him. Her husband Jor-El (Russell Crowe) notes that their planet, its resources depleted, is about to disintegrate. He sends baby Kal-El in a space pod toward Earth, in hopes he will grow into someone Earthlings can learn from. He predicts they’ll see Kal-El as a god. A longtime rival of Jor-El, Gen. Zod (Michael Shannon), stages a failed coup on Krypton. He kills Jor-El and vows to trace Kal-El, retrieve the Kryptonian “codex” Jor-El sent with him, and get revenge.

Cut to the Midwestern farm where baby Kal-El lands. His adoptive parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane), urge the boy to keep his emerging powers secret until he discovers his purpose.

The adult Clark/Kal-El (now Henry Cavill), rather a lost soul, meets Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane (Amy Adams) at an Arctic dig where an alien spacecraft has been discovered. Inside it, Clark/Kal-El learns his history.

Gen. Zod and his minions land on Earth and threaten to destroy humanity. Jor-El advises his son from beyond to save humankind: “Guide them. Give them hope ... you will accomplish wonders.” The last third of the film runs too long and the aerial battles are impossible to follow. Yet the overall effect of “Man of Steel” is highly satisfying.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The violence becomes highly destructive at the film’s climax. Thousands surely die, though we see no victims up close, except for one person alive and pinned under wreckage. The climactic battle over Metropolis recalls images of 9-11. Clark’s adoptive dad dies during a tornado, not allowing Clark to save him. Nine-year-old Clark (Cooper Timberline) freaks out at school when his X-ray vision kicks in. Thirteen-year-old Clark (Dylan Sprayberry) saves a school bus sinking in a river. Characters use occasional crude language and toilet humor and a modified, abbreviated use of the F-word

“This Is The End” R — This knock-down-drag-out, profane and monumentally crude farce aims its humor at 20-something guys and older. It is SO not for under-17s, though many will doubtless see it. The stars and creators of “Superbad” (R, 2007), “Pineapple Express” (R, 2008), and other bad-boy/stoner flicks play versions of themselves in “This Is the End.”

If profundity through comedy was a goal of co-directors and co-writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, they mostly miss their target, but the movie is a guilty pleasure for adults who still love frat-house humor. Expanded from a 2007 short titled “Jay and Seth Versus The Apocalypse,” the film brings Canadian-born actor-pals Jay Baruchel and Seth Rogen together as themselves. Jay comes to visit Seth in L.A. Though he hates Hollywood types, Seth drags him to a party at James Franco’s house, where cocaine, pot and mini-orgies abound.

Seth, Jay, Hill, McBride and Robinson hole up with Franco in his hopefully impregnable mansion. Things go quickly “Lord of the Flies,” until Seth and Jay realize they need to be better people to get to Heaven.

THE BOTTOM LINE: “This Is the End” includes gory horror-movie-style violence, such as a beheading, a demonic monster with a prominent phallus, and a cannibalism joke. Characters engage in drug use and drinking and use continual strong profanity, graphic sexual slang, crude sexual innuendo and rape jokes. There is much gross toilet humor and a nude photo from a porn magazine. The movie’s irreverent spoof of the Apocalypse is bound to offend some on religious grounds.